


That Time Lorne Manages to Steal John's TV

by seikaitsukimizu



Series: Return to Normalcy Verse [2]
Category: Stargate - All Series, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: M/M, Stargate Atlantis AU, Stargate Atlantis Big Bang Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-24
Updated: 2012-11-24
Packaged: 2017-11-19 10:54:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/572497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seikaitsukimizu/pseuds/seikaitsukimizu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lorne manages to steal their TV exactly once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Time Lorne Manages to Steal John's TV

**Author's Note:**

> One of the reviews for The Return to Normalcy asked the question "So Did Lorne ever manage to steal John's TV?" I thought about it for a bit, and then decided that yes, yes he did. Though not in the way you may expect. Spoiler warning for Return to Normalcy, and of course for The Return I/II. Hope you enjoy it!

Lorne manages to steal their TV exactly once. Granted, he was sleepwalking and didn’t know what he was doing at the time, but to John that’s no excuse. At all.  
  
It’s after a really difficult mission. Not difficult as in they’re all captured and tortured, but difficult in that it dealt with Unas, and since SG-1 and Colonel Edwards were unavailable, John and his team got to escort Lorne and one of Daniel’s translating buddies to the Unas mining world. It was mostly to check up on them, see if the Ori had done anything threatening, the usual stuff. McKay was even less bitchy about such a worthless mission, but then, he was more focused on being pissed at Euler getting three neighborhood cats pregnant.   
  
He wasn’t exactly thrilled that Cadman couldn’t stop laughing about it, either. John, wisely, knew when to keep his mouth shut.  
  
The Unas were wary, but otherwise things seemed to be going well. At least, until Lorne went to take a leak and came back with a goa’uld in his head. Apparently, one of Ba’al’s minions had managed to make its way to the planet and take over one of the tribal leaders. The snake almost got away with it too, except some visiting Jaffa was back on the base and immediately zatted Lorne, sensing the goa’uld within.   
  
That wasn’t really the bad part. Unlike Caldwell, who’d had an alien controlling him for months, Lorne was held hostage for only an hour. With the Odyssey in orbit, they were able to extract the creature with no complications.   
  
Except when Lorne shows up in the puddle jumper to report being fit for duty, nothing happens. John, interfaced with the piloting simulation, waits for the typical intrusion of another gene carrier, someone to try wrenching some control from him. There’s nothing. Even when Lorne sits in the co-pilot’s chair and tries to join in the game, the console doesn’t respond to him.   
  
John can see the moment something breaks inside his second, the eyes dimming briefly as he realizes it can’t be the ship, because it’s working fine with John. “You want to get checked out again, Major?”  
  
“Yes, sir.” He stands up, and John does as well, shutting the simulation off to give Lorne moral support. Another hour of tests, though, reveals there’s nothing wrong. He still has the gene. John would demand more tests, but everyone on his team goes to Carson, and he’s the only doctor in the SGC who he truly trusts.  
  
So he radios for an expert. “Rodney, can you come to the infirmary?”  
  
 _“What? Jesus, we’re back on Earth less than ten hours and-”_  
  
“Just get here.” He shuts off the radio and waits, trying to think of a way to cheer up his glum-looking friend. In the end, he takes up the spare seat in Carson’s office and stares at the desk, waiting. He doesn’t have to wait long. Rodney barges in with his mouth open ready to rant when the atmosphere seems to register. John knows people call McKay socially inept, but with the Atlantis personnel he’s not.   
  
“What happened?”  
  
John wants to say something, but doesn’t want to talk about Lorne like he’s not there. Carson seems to feel the same way, by the way he’s shifting in his seat. There’s another two minutes of silence, Rodney shifting his gaze from one to another, his arms crossed. He looks angry, but they all know that’s just his concerned face in a crisis--which, as far as he knows, this is.  
  
“The puddle jumper didn’t respond to my gene,” Lorne finally says. There’s a hopeless tone to his voice, like he’s already resigned himself to not feeling Atlantian technology again.  
  
“What? You mean-”  
  
“He tried to join in on my flight simulation, in the Jumper.” John offers. “It didn’t work.”  
  
Rodney’s brow furrows, and John can see his mind work, putting the pieces together. A glance at Carson, who shakes his head, then back to staring at Lorne. Lorne sighs, but puts up with the scrutiny. John knows if anyone can figure this out, it’s McKay.  
  
It’s a tense few minutes, but then Rodney does that jiggling thing with his arm and starts snapping. “The naqahdah.” They all look at him. “When they found the Repository of Knowledge, it didn’t activate for Teal’c because he carried a goa’uld inside him. Sam ran some tests, and discovered that most Ancient technology was designed with a failsafe against goa’uld infiltration. Anyone with naquahdah in them can’t use gene-specific technology. “ He ticked off his fingers. “The chair, the jumpers, probably most of the control panels…”  
  
Lorne’s shoulders slump. “Great.” At John’s puzzled look, he adds, “Carter got a dose of it, too. It’s still in her bloodstream almost a decade later.”  
  
Carson, though, starts to grin. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t find a way to filter out your blood.” He looks to Rodney.  
  
“Transporter’s out. It’s a heavy element, but in a body it’s too well dissolved to lock onto something.” He’s doing that half-frowning thing that John finds a little sexy. “Give me time to think something up.”  
  
“Aye.” Carson smiles that reassuring grin he uses whenever he’s sure everything will turn out right, even though half the time it doesn’t. He pats Lorne on the shoulder. “Why don’t you head home, rest up. Rodney and I’ll figure this out.”   
  
Lorne looks like he’s going to protest, but he has had a trying day, and after Carson reminds the man that it was recommended he go home after being discharged, John makes it a half-order and offers Lorne a ride home. It’s a quiet ride, but John lets the silence hang. He can only imagine what it would be like to walk into his jumper only to have it not light up at his presence. To not feel the controls or that little tickle at the back of his mind. It’s the stuff of his nightmares, and so far the only way he can cope is to snuggle close to Rodney.  
  
Lorne doesn’t even have that option. So John offers to stay, watch a game, drink beer and just hang out. “No thanks, sir.”  
  
“You need me to walk you over?” Lorne’s house is ridiculously close by, though it’s convenient for being jogging buddies.   
  
“No.” He waits a beat, then gets out of the car and walks in the opposite direction of his house. John watches him go, and contemplates following, but then he sees one of the angry mothers talking with a man with a very fat cat and decides to hide in Lorne’s house. It’s Rodney’s turn to deal with an angry pet owner.  
  
It takes four hours for Lorne to get home, late enough that John’s had time to look over his books--lots of cooking, crafts, and oddly enough, historical fiction--and check out the art on his walls. Just as McKay created a puddle jumper and a room like in Atlantis, Lorne has his own little disclosure violations, one in every room. Atlantis’ spire from the east pier. The view from someone’s quarters. Even one of his team in the mess hall, him and Rodney and Ronon and Teyla. That one’s in his hallway, hanging with pictures of family and friends. He spends a long time staring at that, wondering when Lorne painted it. It’s a later picture, when Ronon could smile again and Rodney felt safe snatching food from his plate and Teyla felt comfortable kicking John under the table.  
  
Lorne comes home the second time John is staring at that picture. The light’s fading outside and there’s clouds gathering for rain, but Lorne just gives a tired look to John, then to the painting. “Shep.”  
  
If John were more the touchy-feely type, he might pull Lorne into a hug. Not the manly, slap on the back hug, but a real emotional hug, the type he gives Rodney after life-threatening missions and after really bad nightmares. He’s not the touchy-feely type, though, so he punches Lorne on the shoulder. “McKay’ll figure it out.”  
  
Lorne blinks, then, slowly, cracks a smile. “He’ll hang it over my head forever, sir.”  
  
“Naw. Just for a few months. Ply him with donuts and he’ll soon forget about it.” John takes one last look at the painting, at friends he can no longer see. “Think I could get a copy?”  
  
“No problem.” Lorne looks at the picture, too. “I started that a week before we…before the exile. Just had the outline.”  
  
“It’s pretty awesome.”   
  
“I almost didn’t finish it. Didn’t finish a lot of them.” Lorne gets a distant look, one John recognizes from when Rodney thinks of Atlantis, and the hard time they had adjusting to life on Earth. “I’m glad I did.”  
  
“You should show McKay. He thinks you just draw decaying fruit and nude pictures.”  
  
“Naw. Got that out of my system while my mom was teaching me.”   
  
There’s a really bad joke in there and John’s just about to tell it when his cell phone starts playing the theme to Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Rodney’s signal that he’s home and wants to eat and where the hell is he and rescue him from the hordes of children/neighbors/horny dogs that follow him everywhere. “Catch you tomorrow?”  
  
“Yes, sir.” Lorne’s smirking a little, and that’s enough to let John leave feeling better. Lorne isn’t cured, but at least he isn’t as depressed as he was earlier.  
  
Later that night, after Chinese and an hour of the Game and a slow, long fuck; John wakes up to the sound of a door slamming. That’s not too unusual, as Rodney tends to slam doors a lot, even when he’s just going to take a piss. However, Rodney is currently curled around John, which means either Euler’s developed opposable digits, or they have intruders.   
  
He shakes Rodney awake, clamping a hand over his mouth to keep him quiet. Rodney sleep-glares and licks his palm before John reaches over to pull out one of the Earth-made zats--look like a real gun, shoots like the purple-penis alien weapon--and show it to him. Rodney wakes up fully after that and, after grabbing the illegal life-signs detector they definitely aren’t supposed to have off-base, they go hunting for intruders.  
  
All sense of stealth is broken when John gets to the living room. “Those bastards!” His beautiful, oh so perfect television, the envy of any and every man, is missing. “When I get my hands on-”  
  
“Did you forget that we have intruders in the--well, actually, we don’t, but still! You’ve just given away our position-”  
  
“It’s gone, Rodney! They took-”  
  
“Yes, yes, I’m perfectly capable of seeing for myself, thank you very much.” He rolls his eyes and checks the life signs detector again. “Unless there’s a hibernating Wraith, we’re alone.”  
  
“Then turn on the tracker! I want my TV back!” John had made Rodney install one a LoJack device in case it was ever stolen. There had been an argument about Rodney being able to afford fifty of those things and something about sleeping on the couch for a month and his talents being put to better use, but John could be very persuasive. Also, he knew all of Rodney’s erogenous zones and his kink about sex in bathrooms. It hadn’t taken long after that for Rodney to fulfill John’s request with lots of grumbling and a big hickey.  
  
Rodney does something to the detector and waits. Then his face screws up. “Huh. Guess you weren’t lying about Lorne having an illicit affair with the big screen after all.”  
  
John’s already headed to the door and down the block before Rodney catches up and grabs him by the arm. “Hey, whoa! What, are you going to beat him up because he took your favorite toy?”  
  
Though he won’t admit it, Rodney has a point. “He broke in and stole something! It’s not exactly like he took my favorite fire truck.”  
  
“Maybe we should find out why before you go all seagull on his ass.”  
  
John really had to stop referencing Finding Nemo on missions. It was starting to bite him in the ass. “Fine.” A quick jog at they were at Lorne’s house. His door was wide open, which had Rodney checking the detector again and John snooping around with his gun held out. “Anything,” he whispered.  
  
“Just Lorne. Looks like he’s just to the right.”  
  
Lorne’s entry way had a dining room on the left and the living room on the right. It was fairly easy to spot the man once his eyes adjusted to the darkness. How he’d carried the TV so easily, he didn’t know, but it was obvious that Lorne clearly wasn’t thinking clearly. “McKay, why’s he trying to shove my TV into the fireplace?”  
  
“Maybe he discovered all those Golden Girls episodes you TiVoed.”  
  
“I told you, Cadman did that.” John tucked his weapon into the back of his sweat pants and touched Lorne on the shoulder. The result was instant, Lorne taking a swing at him that landed him on his ass with a sore eye socket. It also meant that he was no longer holding the heavy flat screen, and it shattered on the floor. John felt a little part of his soul die.  
  
McKay, apparently, was a little more on the ball, because he’d disappeared somewhere, only to come back with a glass of water and threw it over Lorne’s face. There was sputtering, and Rodney ducking another swing, then an awkward stillness, like the Major had just realized something. After another awkward minute, Rodney crossed his arms. “Care to explain what’s going on?”  
  
“McKay?” There was a sleepiness to his tone, as if he’d just woken up. “Shep?”  
  
“You sure you were cleared, Major?” John felt along his eye and winced. Yup, it was going to be black in the morning.   
  
“Yes, sir.” A beat. “What’re you doing in my house?”  
  
“Why did you steal my TV?”  
  
“I didn’t. I was dreaming, and--” Even in the dark, John could see something click in Lorne’s mind. “Oh. Oh, um. Sorry, sir. I haven’t…it’s been decades since-”  
  
Rodney let out a long sigh. “You’re a sleepwalker.”  
  
“What?” He’d never heard any reports of Lorne sleepwalking on Atlantis.  
  
“I haven’t since I was little. And that one time when an Unas tried to eat me.”  
  
“Great. You sleepwalk to deal with stress.”   
  
That made sense to John. Rodney yelled at minions, Carson got introspective, John hung out in the jumper…Lorne sleepwalked. And after a day like today, he supposed he should cut the man a break. Taken by a goa’uld, unable to fly the jumper anymore…that was enough stress to drive anyone to do something a little crazy.  
  
“Um…sorry, Sheppard. I’ll-”  
  
“Forget it,” Rodney said. “Next one I’ll buy we’ll bolt to the wall.”  
  
“Hey! I’m perfectly able to afford-”  
  
“You’re not suited to compare the subtle nuances between-”  
  
“Um, guys,” Lorne interrupts, “I hate to ask, but could someone get me shoes? There’s broken glass all around me.”  
  
Rodney insists Lorne sleep on their couch. ”You obviously can’t be trusted in your own house, and since you have the same self-preservation capabilities of One-Eye over there, you’d probably kill yourself tripping over the broken TV. And would you stop glaring, Sheppard! Keep that steak on your eye!” In the morning, Lorne apologizes again. John buys a new TV later that day and immediately has it bolted to the wall so at least next time Lorne has to use power tools.  
  
By the time he’s on-base Lorne’s having his blood filtered by Rodney and Carson so that he can fly the puddle jumper once more. Landry’s in a bit of a snit about using the resources, but he and McKay and Carson provide a united front that has the man unhappy, but letting them go about their business. It’s worth it at the end, when they bring Lorne to the jumper and it lights up, its systems happy to see a pilot and responding to his mental commands.  
  
He doesn’t make Lorne see the base shrink, but John does invite himself--and sometimes Rodney--over to Lorne’s place to hang out. Sometimes to watch football, sometimes for a movie, sometimes just to hang over dinner. John knows he’s lucky to have Rodney, someone who stuck with him and can help him through trying times. He wants Lorne to know he doesn’t have to deal with it all alone.  
  
Just not with Cadman, because she hears of the sleep-stealing and laughs her ass off. It’s all right, though, because by then Lorne can laugh at it too, and John’s just happy his team is ready for its next big mission.


End file.
